Slovakia:Slovakia's parliament has voted overwhelmingly to uphold laws that sanctioned the deportation of ethnic Hungarians and Germans and the confiscation of their property after the second World War.
The resolution was supported by almost all deputies from Slovakia's ruling and opposition parties, except for those representing the country's Hungarians, who comprise some 10 per cent of the country's population of 5.4 million.
The move, which blocks any claims for compensation or restitution from German or Hungarian families that were affected by the laws, drew a sharp response from Budapest, which regularly clashes with a Slovak government that has a strong nationalist element.
Post-war Czechoslovakia passed the laws to punish the country's German and Hungarian minorities for alleged collaboration with Hitler's Third Reich and his allies in Budapest, who with Nazi permission took control of southern Slovakia, while the rest was run by Jozef Tiso, a Catholic priest and anti-Semite who was hanged after the war.
The so-called Benes decrees, named after post-war Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes, stripped ethnic German and Hungarians of their citizenship and property rights, and deported them to Germany, Austria and Hungary. About 2.6 million ethnic Germans and 40,000 Hungarians were driven out of Czechoslovakia after 1945.
In 1948, communist Czechoslovakia reinstated citizenship to all Hungarians and Germans still living in the country. Since the collapse of communism and their "velvet divorce" in 1993, however, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have repeatedly refused to rescind the remaining decrees.
Jan Slota, far-right leader of the Slovak National Party that is part of the country's ruling coalition, said Thursday's vote ensured "no one in the future challenges the Benes decrees", something that could result in property disputes and huge compensation claims.
Jozsef Berenyi, a deputy for the Hungarian Coalition Party, denounced a bill that he said "would in fact declare the principle of collective guilt, applied to all citizens of German and Hungarian ethnicity. It would do so now, three years after Slovakia's EU entry".
Hungarian government spokesman David Daroczi said Budapest also "rejects the principle of collective guilt and finds the resolution as running counter to the two countries' joint interests and EU values".
Relations between Budapest and Bratislava have deteriorated since populist Slovak prime minister Robert Fico formed a coalition last year with Mr Slota, who is best known in Hungary for threatening to drive Slovak tanks through Budapest.